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The archaeology of post-depositional interactions with the dead. An introduction Edeltraud Aspöck, Alison Klevnäs and Nils Müller-Scheeßel During excavations we often encounter mortuary deposits which show evidence of disturbance. Graves, especially inhumation burials as opposed to cremations, readily show signs of disorder. Human bones may be displaced and intermingled with grave goods, or traces of pits or damage to coffins or other containers may show that others have been digging before the archaeologists arrived. This book explores past human interactions with mortuary deposits, delving into the different ways graves and human remains were approached by people in the past and the reasons that led to such encounters. The primary focus of the volume is on cases of unexpected interference with individual graves soon after burial, that is, re-encounters with human remains which do not seem to have been anticipated by those who performed the funerary rituals and constructed the tombs. But in addition, re-use of graves at later stages is also discussed in some of the case studies, as well as practices concerning double or collective graves in which reopening and manipulation of previous deposits is required when the “new” dead are added. Multiple types of post-depositional practices may frequently be seen in the same period and region and sometimes at the same burial site or even in a single grave. The observation that graves were often deliberately disturbed in the past is long-standing, but the phenomenon has not been a popular subject for research, until recently remaining on the margins of archaeological discourse. Undisturbed mortuary deposits show how bodies were deposited, which grave goods and furniture were there originally and – subject to natural taphonomic alterations – frequently offer collections of valuable artefacts for study and display. As “closed contexts”, undisturbed graves have long been valued as important methodological tools for establishing typologies and chronologies. For social analysis of cemeteries, complete sets of grave goods and skeletal evidence that is as exhaustive as possible are basic requirements. In “disturbed” graves we cannot say for certain the number or types of grave goods that were once deposited and, if an interment has been heavily interfered with, we may not know how the body was placed, and in some cases not even how many individuals were initially present. Accordingly, for most of their history, disturbed graves were generally deemed interesting and worth analysis only according to the degree that they still showed evidence of the original deposition. However, paradigms in mortuary archaeology have changed: recent research has moved away from researching the normative and the typical, and with this move interest in post-depositional practices has been rising (e.g. Aspöck 2008; Murphy 2008). One consequence of the perception of all deliberate re-entries into burials in the past as essentially damage to the archaeological record was limited interest in the reasons for post-depositional interferences in graves. The go-to explanation was that ancient “grave robbers” in search of valuables would be accountable for the traces of disturbance seen by modern excavators in most if not all cases (Fig. 1.1; Fig. 1.2). Indeed, as this book shows, this interpretation was invoked whether it was Early Medieval cemeteries in Europe or the tombs of the Maya that were found disturbed. Thus for a long time an understanding prevailed that in the past, graves were seen – at least by the robbers and their affiliates – principally as hoards of objects valuable and useful to the living for materialistic reasons. And since motives for “grave robbing” seemed plain and self-explanatory, the behaviour as such never aroused much interest in scholarly discourse. This paradigm remained a vigorous part of archaeological narratives for a long time, indeed perhaps still remains so. It has been influential in particular in periods with large-scale occurrence of grave reopening and object removal, notably the Early Bronze Age of central Europe and the Early Middle Ages of western and central Europe, and was only occasionally challenged by those looking into the evidence more closely. In the last decade or so, in-depth research has begun into what is now preferably described under more neutral categories such as “post-burial interventions”, “grave reopening” or “post-depositional practices”. Both the new interest and new terminology are based on awareness that the reopening of a grave is in many cases by no means a criminal act, nor laden with the negative sentiment implied by the term “robbery”. For these reasons, we avoid the term “grave robbery” when presenting a range of recent approaches to the topic in this volume, even though it is sometimes intended as simply a technical term for past interference with mortuary deposits. We contend that “grave robbery”, used equally for the description of archaeological evidence and its interpretation, mixes different stages of the research process and is therefore misleading. It also depletes interpretative power in those contexts in which reopening does in fact appear to have been motivated by illicit acquisition, which themselves provide opportunities to interrogate ideas about the dead and their kin as property-holders. Instead, we prefer more neutrally descriptive terms such as “reopening”, “deliberate disturbance” or “manipulation”. These sometimes come across as awkward neologisms, especially when the individuals who reopened graves are denoted as “reopeners” or “manipulators”, but these alternative terms help to avoid preconceptions about the nature and motives of reopening across contexts. Use of such alternative terms has become more and more commonplace in studies critical of previous models of interpretation. The papers gathered here give new insights into the forms and motivations for past re-entries into graves in archaeological contexts across the world. They demonstrate that the reopening of burials in the past is an important source for past cultural practices, embedded in social notions of what is proper, what is necessary and what is possible. In the remainder of this introduction we will first introduce previous research and outline how the study of post-depositional practices emerged as a new subfield in funerary archaeology. Then comes discussion of methodological developments in the excavation, analysis and interpretation of reopened graves. Finally we give an overview of different types of practices for which graves were reopened, discussed in relation to the case studies in this volume. We will focus on recent developments – and the challenges which they entail – which make this area of research a fascinating and rewarding topic.
The European Archaeologist
Aspöck, E. and Klevnäs, A. 2011. Past Disturbances of Graves. The Reopening of Graves for Grave-Robbery and Other Practices. The European Archaeologist, 36, 66-70.2011 •
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by E.M. Murphy, 2008. (Studies in Funerary Archaeology 2.) Oxford: Oxbow Books; ISBN 978-1-84217-338-1 paperback £30 & US$60; xvii+244 pp., 72 figs., 14 tables2009 •
Across Europe early medieval archaeologists have long recognised significant numbers of graves displaying evidence for the intentional post-burial disturbance of skeletons and artefacts. The practice of reopening and manipulating graves soon after burial, traditionally described—and dismissed—as ‘robbing’, is documented at cemeteries from Transylvania to southern England. This paper will present recent research investigating evidence and motivations for the reopening of early medieval graves. Examples will illustrate how disturbed burials can be recognized and understood. It will be argued that from the later sixth century AD, the reopening of individual graves and removal of selected artefact types rapidly became part of the shared treatment of the dead across this wide area.
The aim of this thesis is to investigate the usefulness of the concept of deviant burials in prehistory. Deviant burials are extensively recorded in the archaeological record in later period archaeology, for example vampire burials. For the purposes of this work deviant will include burials which are unusual, and deliberately differentiated from the standard burial practices of a site. I am investigating whether this approach has value in looking at the prehistoric burial record because they have been seen as a later period phenomenon almost entirely; this is due to the ease with which they can be detected in the historic period, when normative Christian burial practices were dominant and there is evidence of written accounts of treatment of particular individuals. By examining an unusual prehistoric burial in terms of its context and in that of burial practices in this location and time period, can burials which are genuinely atypical be identified? The case studies of Khirokitia in Cyprus, Shkãrat Msaied in Jordan, and Locality HK43 in Hierakonpolis in Egypt will be discussed.
Destruction. ARCHAEOLOGICAL, PHILOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES. Edited by Jan Driessen
Living through destructions Deliberate vs. accidental manipulation of human remains and grave goods in Western Mediterranean rock-cut chambers tombs of the 4th and 3rd millennium BC2013 •
In Chapter 4 , Weiss-Krejci provides a detailed discussion of the formation processes of mortuary skeletal samples using a graphic model exemplified with historic and ethnographic examples. She then goes on to provide a retrospective analysis of the formation of mortuary deposits from the prehistoric Mayan site of Tikal. She illustrates how preconceived notions of “burials” and what constitutes a grave, can color our perceptions of mortuary behavior in the past. Further, this work reminds us that we must remain vigilant of the fact that the data we collect and how we categorize it is in fact part of our interpretation, and to use our own cultural norms as the basis for these categorizations can render the results removed from the social realities of the past. (from Introduction by Agarwal and Glenncross, p. 4).
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